Learning what has to travel with the words

I grew up in a Christian family in Shillong and completed English at Qevlumi Arts College in June 1999. The following month I joined Zemvqari Language Studio as a transcription assistant. I worked under the production manager in a six-person group, with no reporting staff or expense delegation. Listening closely was part of the work, but so was understanding why the written record existed and which version a colleague was expected to use. The difference between an accurate transcript and a usable production source became an early practical lesson.

A recording session brings several kinds of authority into one room. A performer interprets a line, a director guides the performance and a client may approve the wording. The coordinator still needs to know which approval applies to the material in front of everyone. As a junior colleague I could identify a discrepancy without deciding the creative answer myself. I learned to bring it to the responsible person rather than quietly choose the wording that seemed most sensible and leave the next team unaware of the choice.

In April 2005 I became recording coordinator. Twelve colleagues worked within ₹82 lakh annual team expense under the studio head. Zemvqari then employed 76 people and recorded ₹14 crore revenue for the year ending March 2006. The remit connected bookings, scripts, recording records and delivery. I learned that a busy studio could produce excellent work against material that no longer described the client's current intention. Keeping the session moving was not enough if the basis for proceeding had changed outside the room.

I moved to Chennai in September 2012 to become delivery manager at Tazquni Interactive Services. The company had 90 employees and ₹34 crore FY 2013 revenue. I led 36 colleagues through three leads within ₹8.4 crore annual operating expense, reporting to the head of operations. Interactive work introduced another dimension: a line could be accurate in isolation yet unsuitable for the moment, space or sequence in which the player encountered it. I needed to connect production completion with testing in the relevant context.

The head-of-localisation-delivery appointment followed in June 2017. My remit grew to 110 colleagues through four leads and ₹29 crore annual operating expense as the company reached 155 staff and ₹62 crore FY 2018 revenue. I reported to the CEO. The work crossed language, audio and testing teams, each with legitimate evidence about its own contribution. I became more concerned with what happened between their approvals. A file could leave one team correctly while the receiving team lacked the version or context needed to use it correctly.

I became COO in February 2022. Today I lead 180 of the company's 220 colleagues through five operating heads and report to CEO Arun Vezqumi. FY 2026 revenue was ₹96 crore, with ₹11 crore operating profit and 52 completed project assignments for 18 clients. Miriam Qelvumi leads linguistic quality. My operating expense does not give me authority to decide a publisher's release, interpret performer rights alone or replace engineering and security owners. It makes me responsible for an account in which their decisions reach the delivery plan.

The recording correction is a case I keep close because the handoff was mine to question. A batch of 1,360 takes included 420 that needed repeating after the source script changed. I had allowed recording to proceed without a sufficiently clear confirmation of the applicable version. The correction cost ₹27 lakh. The actors' performances were not the issue. We needed a decision about the source to reach the studio before asking people to produce more work from it.

Another case concerned subtitles that were correctly translated but too compressed against a project's agreed review criterion. We retimed 320 items and rewrote 240 after examining 560 of 2,800 items. That work required linguistic and timing judgement together. It did not establish a universal character rate or prove audience comprehension. I want an operating account that describes the specific acceptance condition met, without expanding it into a claim the review never tested.

The commercial boundaries matter just as much. A request to reuse voice material for model training required a permissions assessment beyond the existing recording scope. We declined a ₹2.8 crore extension as proposed. A portfolio report needed to distinguish nine accepted projects from the much larger value of three awaiting acceptance. A six-market launch required storefront assets as well as application translations, and two markets moved twelve days while those materials were corrected. None of these choices becomes more credible by inventing the revenue or complaints supposedly saved.

I speak Khasi, English, Hindi and working Tamil. I have presented operating matters to directors but have never held a statutory seat. A first outside role would require learning the receiving company's wider risks and duties, alongside a realistic assessment of relationships and capacity. Fictional IICA registration began in July 2026, with the assessment still to complete. I would bring a practical understanding of handoffs and acceptance while remaining clear that preparation for collective oversight is different from extending my present line authority into another business.